Toward a Popular Front for the Liberation of the People of the United States from the Apparatus of the Global Warfare and Corporate Welfare State

As I noted the other day, at Mirror on America Liberal Arts Dude has been contemplating the possibility and potential for a coalition of left and right wing political outsiders "to mount a legitimate populist challenge to the dominance of the two major parties." Like proposals for a Green-Libertarian alliance, this idea is not as far fetched as it might at first sound. Among the major tasks necessary for any such effort would be the delineation of common points of interest between left- and right-wing populist formations, bolstered by thoroughgoing critiques of the ideological prejudices of each against the other which are fostered by the duopoly system of government to prevent precisely this sort of people's alliance against entrenched political elites.

In a piece for Salon on "Glenn Beck and left-right confusion," Glenn Greenwald recently argued that traditional political shorthand for distinguishing between left- and right-wing positions on a host of issues has begun to break down. He writes:

Is opposition to the Wall Street bailout (supported by both parties' establishments) left or right? How about the view that Washington is inherently corrupt and beholden to the richest corporate interests and banks which, through lobbyist influence and vast financial contributions, own and control our political system? Is hostility towards Beltway elites liberal or conservative? Is opposition to the Surveillance State and endless expansions of federal police powers a view of liberals (who vehemently opposed such measures during the Bush era but now sometimes support or at least tolerate them) or conservatives (some of whom -- the Ron Paul faction -- objected just as vigorously, and naturally oppose such things regardless of who is in power as transgressions of the proper limits of government)? Liberals during the Bush era continuously complained about the doubling of the national debt, a central concern of many of these "tea party" protesters. Is the belief that Washington politicians are destroying the economic security of the middle class, while the rich grow richer, a liberal or conservative view? Opposition to endless wars and bankruptcy-inducing imperial policy generally finds as much expression among certain quarters on the Right as it does on the Left.

The internal debate among tea party activists continues to revolve around the question of the appropriate course of action for the future of the movement, in other words, whether to work within the existing two-party framework by infiltrating the major parties to change them from within or to work outside the exiting two-party framework, and begin to chip away at the Democratic-Republican duopoly on political power. Among those who advocate the former strategy we find self-described pragmatic realists as well as known duopolist shills. For the most part, the duopolist shill reveals the rot at the center of two-party ideology in his or her purely negative, partisan relation to the political order: Democrats (–or Republicans, as the case may be–) must be stopped at all costs, is their rallying cry. The fetishistic obsession with the political other here covers over their own lack of a positive program and distracts from the obvious conclusion that such a strategy, if successful, will change just enough to ensure that everything remains the same. The self-described pragmatic realist, on the other hand, admits that the two-party form is thoroughly corrupt, but argues that one must nonetheless work within the reigning system because all other strategies have little chance of success. Ironically, few such realists recognize the utopian character of this position: third party and independent activism is forever doomed to failure, they say, while maintaining that the Republican (or Democratic) Party can be "fixed," remodeled in our image and likeness over the course of the next election cycle.

The temptation to affiliate with either of the duopoly parties is the greatest threat to the future success of the tea party movement. Tea party activists could learn a great deal from serious study of the anti-war movement and its hijacking by the Democratic Party, so as to avoid the same fate, namely, complete and utter defeat of yet another popular movement at the hands of the political establishment. Many already grasp this simple fact. At American Revolution, Patrick Samuels writes:

It is my belief that only by destroying the monopoly of the two party system is there any hope for making real and lasting change in the direction of this country. The new leaders will not be Democrats or Republicans but independents from the tea party movement itself.

It is thus not difficult to see that, conversely, progressives and anti-war activists could learn a thing or two from the tea party movement. Instead, however, many are content simply to denounce conservatives and libertarians as racists, rather than consider, for instance, the possibility of a popular front for the liberation of the people of the United States from the apparatus of the global warfare and corporate welfare state. In this context, it should be noted that "you can be a Democrat and racist at the same time," as Melissa Harris-Lacewell reminded readers of The Nation just last week. Opposition to the global warfare and corporate welfare state is not confined to the left or the right. The bifurcation and compartmentalization of this opposition is nothing but a symptom of duopolist prejudice.

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jonathan-weiler/the-tea-party-movements-p_b_298539.html